For bees who are afraid to order a Forever Brilliant: a Review

Hey bees! This is my first official post! weee! Ok, so I have been stalking the hell out of these boards for the past year, totally drooling over all of your rings! I’ve been with my SO for 5 1/2 years and we’ve talked about getting married for a while now. I figured I’d better decide what I like in an e-ring while I still have time to plant seeds in his head! I very quickly discovered moissanite and after a lot of discussions over the past year I finally convinced him we should give it a try. I love diamond, but we just can’t afford it right now. I also love colored gemstones, but would like a clear stone for my e-ring. Also, moissanite just looks freakin’ awesome.

I’ve seen a lot of bees who want to know about the difference between Forever Brilliant and Amoras, and I wish I could say I’ve seen both, but I’m having a slightly unique experience that may be of help for those of you who are hesitant to order a FB. We are getting engaged witin a month (picked out the setting together) and I didn’t want to have to wait for an Amora because we’re visting family right after, so I emailed Betterthandiamond and Less agreed to send me a FB with certification from NAGL to make sure the polish/symmetry are both “good”, just like the Amoras. They are also making sure that the color is no lower than J, in addition to any other screening they do. The certification cost us an extra $35, but it seems worth it. (If you look on the BTD site, there are pictures of amoras and FBs and their NAGL certificates, and some of the FBs have lower grading so I thought this would be a good way to ensure I was getting a good one.) I know these pictures of the really bad FBs are dated and specifically picked to show some of the duds, and that they’re supposed to be much better now, but I want to feel reassured about our purchase.

The FB should be delivered by Monday, hopefully tomorrow if I’m lucky! I can’t stop checking the tracking number! I’ll take some pictures and maybe a video if I can figure it out and let you know what I think. Hope this will help some of you! And thank you to all you bees who have been so generous with your ring pictures, regardless of stone, size, or metal. Love them all and keep ’em coming!

First of all Less at BTD is great. He answered all of my questions and because the Amora moissanite is not currently available, and there are so many people like me with a time limit, they are now offering the certified Forever Brilliant stones for an extra charge of $35. I was very hesitant to order a FB and I know there are a million moissanite threads, but I hope this will be a helpful and thorough post for bees currently in my position, or if you’re just impatient, which I am also guilty of!

I just took a ton of pictures for you and I came to some interesting conclusions:

My stone finally came in yesterday, and when I opened the box, I wasn’t sure what to think. The stone was not what I originally expected. It looked very warm and I was a little disappointed at first, but after about an hour, which turned into the entire evening and counting, of playing around with it in different light I quickly realized that the stone is absolutely gorgeous! It’s also a teeny bit bigger than 1ct 😉

My bathroom has the worst lighting for any stone because the carpet, walls, and lights are all sandy yellow colors, and that was my first impression. Also, I do own a 3/4 diamond necklace (*see pictures) which is in a bezel setting, and it also doesn’t look fantastic in my bathroom. The diamond is an F color and the Forever Brilliant is a J color, so the warmth of the moissanite would be obvious to me because of the color difference. You might also find you’re color sensitive if you’ve been wearing any kind of whiter stone. I’ve had this necklace for many years, so I’m used to the F color. I can see warmth in the diamond, so I now know I’m sensitive to color, not that I don’t like the warmth, but I notice it even on very light stones. In reality (and not on the bee ) no one would really notice the color grade of your stone when they’re not examining it so closely. You won’t be comparing two stones right next to each other either, and that can really bring out the warmth in a rock you didnt previously notice it in.

I’m not going to try to pass it off as a diamond, however, I think there are some negative qualities associated with mossanite that both moissanite and diamond share.

First, the “yellow” is just warmth. Seriously. It’s not bright, highlighter yellow, or green, it’s just buttery, like a J diamond. It’s the same shade of yellow I can see in my F diamond, just more. I have a friend with an I diamond who came to look at it for me and the moissanite was the same color as her stone. Some people like lighter stones and until the amora gem comes out, you might prefer an asha, white saphire, or whiter diamond if you’re not a fan. I also think that sometimes whiter stones can look better on people with my skin tone because I feel like it sort of blends a little with my coloring in bad lighting, but when the light is good, which is most of the time, it sparkles like CRAZY and I’d choose that over color any day.

It also does look white most of the time. Under flourescent lights, in sunlight, and in overhead lighting it’s very white. In indirect lighting, or when you’re around a lot of yellow/warm neutral colors, the stone will absorb those colors and with the lack of light it will sparkle less.

Here’s the thing, though: Every single time I thought I didn’t like something that the stone was doing (see previous paragraph), the diamond ALWAYS behaved in the same way. These were all things people have complained moissanite does – things that sounded as though they were exclusive charachteristics of moissanite – things that made people decide to get a diamond instead! When I’m in my yellow bathroom, the diamond is yellow, when I’m wearing a teal shirt, you can see the color reflecting in the diamond, etc. There’s also a kind of holographic or iridescent look that people have mentioned here, and I thought i saw that in both stones when I put them under our christmas lights. (there’s a picture of this)

The one thing I will say is moissanite does these things a little bit more, but it’s so hard to tell if it’s really that or if it’s because the color grades, stone sizes, and cuts are different.

The one inherent difference that I will say is noticeable between my two stones, is that the moissanite has a lot more fire than brilliance and the diamond has more brilliance than fire. I don’t know the cut quality of the diamond either, but I know it’s not a traditional round brilliant. I think it has extra facets, and it’s smaller, so the flashes of color are smaller and therefore harder to see. I will also add that I have seen an ideal cut round brilliant before and it had much more fire than most diamonds with lower cut grades.

This post wasn’t originally intended to compare moissanite and diamonds, but once I started comparing the two and came to some realizations, I couldn’t not share. Forever Brilliants look like J colored Ideal cut diamonds. They’re really not very different at all. I think it’s farily safe to conclude that Amoras look indistinguishable to whatever diamonds share the same color grade. Again, I’m not trying to pass the moissanite off, but if the stone looked neon yellow or green to me, I wouldn’t keep it, so a diamond is another beautiful stone to compare qualities with.

Whether you’re looking into getting a moissanite or a diamond and you’re color sensitive, or don’t know if you are, I’d suggest going to a jeweler and looking at some loose diamonds under different lighting, or checking out your close girlfriends’ stones, and if you get one in the mail don’t open it in the worst room in your house. I was in the vanity part of our bathroom because the scissors are there.

Lastly, warmth can be a good thing. Some people prefer it, and some hate it, so just see what you like and what your priorities are in a stone. You will be the only person who really noitces the details, so do what makes you happy! I like diamonds and moissanite. Both are beautiful, and one fits our budget. That makes me happy. If they were the same price I don’t know what I’d choose because they’re both amazing. The setting we ordered is edwardian inspired and I read somewhere that during that time period people actually preferred warmer diamonds because they thought they were more unique, which is funny because that was when white metals, such as white gold and platinum became the fashion. Cool, eh?

Again, thank you to all the bees who have posted about moissanite and just in general. I was so ignorant before coming here!

@MsW-to-MrsM: The forever brilliants are supposed to be a J color, from what I know of. The certificate I have says J. I expressed to Less that I wanted the whitest FB they had. The Amoras are supposed to be a shade or two lighter, but they’re not really available at the moment, so I wanted to make sure I knew what i was getting and that was worth a little extra $.